George W. Crandell
In the following essay, Crandell examines the per-
sona of the ‘‘poet-fool’’ in Nash’s poems, including
‘‘The Hippopotamus.’’
For some readers, the term ‘‘humorous
poetry’’ is an oxymoron. ‘‘Poetry’’ denotes some-
thing serious, while ‘‘humorous,’’ by definition,
means just the opposite. Equating ‘‘serious’’ with
‘‘good’’ and ‘‘humorous’’ with ‘‘bad,’’ the same
individuals use ‘‘humorous’’ in a pejorative sense
to distinguish writing that has some of the for-
mal characteristics of poetry, rhyme and meter
for example, but which lacks the seriousness of
lyric, narrative or dramatic verse. Likewise, the
termsvers de socie ́te ́and ‘‘light verse’’ have some-
times been used synonymously with ‘‘humorous
poetry’’ to denote a type of writing lacking both
seriousness and significant aesthetic value.
This line of argument has even been carried
to the point of dissociating humor and art. Imma-
nuel Kant, for example, commenting on the
‘‘humorous manner,’’ perceives a qualitative dif-
ference between humor and art such that the
creative act of humor ‘‘belongs rather to pleasant
than to beautiful art, because the object of the
latter must always show proper worth in itself,
and hence requires a certain seriousness in the
presentation, as taste does in the act of judging.’’
Similarly, Christopher Wilson argues that ‘‘art
and humour have comparable form but differ in
the significance of their raw materials,’’ art, unlike
humor, being ‘‘constructed from serious stuff.’’
Even among writers of ‘‘light verse’’ the seri-
ous/humorous characterization is an important
one, significant enough, in fact, that American
humorist and poet Ogden Nash made the distinc-
tion between serious and humorous poetry the
basis of his art. Nash confesses that he gave
up hope of becoming a ‘‘serious’’ poet after the
fashion of Browning, Swinburne or Tennyson,
and so ‘‘began to poke a little bit of fun at [him-
self],...accentuating the ludicrousside of[what],
atfirsthadbeenattemptsat serious poetry.’’ Early
in his career, Nash decided ‘‘that it would be better
to be ‘a good bad poet than a bad good poet.’’’
Nash’s self-depreciating remarks may be
seen as a defensive strategy similar to that
employed by professional comedians studied
by Seymour and Rhonda Fisher: ‘‘The comic
defends himself againstthe accusation of bad-
ness by systematically proving that what is
good and bad exists only in the eye of the
beholder.’’ The comic asserts his own goodness
by convincing ‘‘people that good and bad, like
all classificatory schemes, are relative and that
they may, in fact, blend meaninglessly to each
other’’ (Fisher 70).
Although Nash uses the term ‘‘good-bad
poet’’ jokingly and disparagingly, it characterizes
two distinctive features of his work. The ‘‘good-
bad’’ distinction serves equally well to describe 1)
Nash’s divided persona, the poet-fool, who, as
we shall see, may be ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘bad’’ depending
upon the perspective from which he is viewed,
and 2) Nash’s concern with problems of morality.
An examination of these two characteristic fea-
tures of Nash’s work ultimately reveals that, in
Nash’s view, moral and aesthetic categories alike
are relative.
In history and literature, the poet and the
fool have not always been one and the same
person, although both figures have long been
associated with special knowledge and truth-tell-
ing. In many cultures, as Enid Welsford testifies,
the fool is seen as an ‘‘awe-inspiring figure’’ who
has ‘‘become the mouthpiece of a spirit, or power
external to himself, and so has access to hidden
knowledge. Likewise, the poet was first a kind of
wise man who later expressed himself in verse. In
tracing the connection between poets and fools,
Welsford observes that in Mohammedan litera-
ture, ‘‘thesha’iror poet-seer was not originally a
man who possessed the art of expressing himself
in moving verse, but rather a man endowed with
supernatural power and knowledge, which he
uttered in a peculiar type of rhymed prose called
saj, which later developed into regular metre’’
(Welsford 79–80). Much later in time, Welsford
relates, thesha’iror poet-seer declined in influ-
ence and so became associated with the court
fool. In the figure of Buhlul, Welsford writes,
‘‘we do have an example of an inspired poet-
saint who was also a court fool,’’ (Welsford 82),
a prototype then of the poet-fool.IN THE GUISE OF THE POET-FOOL, NASH,
FOLLOWING THE PATTERN OF HISTORICAL AND
LITERARY ANTECEDENTS, IS BOTH TRUTH-TELLER
AND BUFFOON.’’The Hippopotamus